Accessibility

What makes a website accessible?

The W3C organization defines accessibility as follows: "The Web is fundamentally designed to work for all people, whatever their hardware, software, language, culture, location, or physical or mental ability. When the Web meets this goal, it is accessible to people with a diverse range of hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive ability."

Accessibility of our website

Our website is designed to comply with all current accessibility standards; however some pages may temporarily fail to adhere to these standards. If any such failure is not rapidly corrected please let us know.

Key design features of our website:

Adheres to HTML standards to ensure screen readers, such as JAWS, are easy to use.

Provides alternatives for any content that may cause a loss of information (images, scripts, and so on).

Adheres to contrast standards to ensure easy reading.

Includes simplified browsing features such as clear link descriptions, keyboard shortcuts, site map, search engine, internal links for long pages, and so on.

Separates content from presentation so personal font styles and sizes may be imported.

Functions

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

The followingkeyboard shortcuts provide quick and easy access to the main sections of this website.

Accessibility page: shortcut key = 0

Home page: shortcut key = 1

Go to navigation: shortcut key = m

Go to navigation: shortcut key = s

Go to content: shortcut key = c

Direct access to website search engine: shortcut key = 4

Site map: shortcut key = 3

Contact page: shortcut key = 7

The above website shortcuts work in conjunction with other keys depending on the browser used:

Internet Explorer: Alt + Shift + [shortcut key], then Enter

Firefox: Alt + Shift + [shortcut key]

Google Chrome: Alt + Shift + [shortcut key]

Opera: Esc + Shift + [shortcut key]

Safari: Alt + Shift + [shortcut key]

DISPLAYED FONT SIZE

Most Internet browsers allow you to adjust text to a comfortable reading size.

For most browsers: press Ctrl and turn mouse wheel to enlarge or reduce font size.

Internet Explorer: select Text size in the View menu

Firefox, Mozilla and Netscape: press Ctrl and + key on the numeric keypad to enlarge and Ctrl and – key to reduce font size.

Opera: press + or – keys on the number pad or select Zoom in the View menu.

This website may not be compatible with certain font sizes and if this is the case, change the settings of your browser to display text and images only.

Firefox, Mozilla: open the View menu, go to Page style and select No style

Internet Explorer: this function is not available

Useful software

Some of this website's media requires additional software that may not be installed on your computer. Here is a list of the software and links to download them: